Philly Resident Kickstarting His Real Batman Armor

Philly Resident Kickstarting His Real Batman Armo

By Dennis Upkins
11/15/2014

In comic books, James Gordon is one of Batman’s most loyal allies who aids the Caped Crusader in protecting Gotham from any arising threat. However in real life it is Jackson Gordon who is working to make Batman’s costume a reality through a Kickstarter campaign.

“[The goal is] to create a real world equivalent of a batsuit that would provide significant protection and be accurate to the character,”Gordon explained on his Kickstarter page.”My idea is to design my own version of what a real world equivalent of a batsuit should be, and then actually construct it.”

The Philadelphia based design student also emphasized that while the armor may be inspired by 1/3 of DC Comics’ Trinity, this project is not cosplay.

“It’s important to stress that this is not a costume, but rather an actual fully functioning replication of what a person would want in a modern type combat suit,” Gordon explained. “This suit is not being designed to take on gunfire, as that would cost exponentially more and is above my skill set, but rather towards hand to hand combat and weapon defense against bats, knifes, and other club like objects. I don’t plan on replicating his additional gear, such as the grapnel gun and smoke grenades, just the protective suit itself. While creating a protective suit is not all that difficult in and of itself, applying a theme to said suit, in this case batman, leads to a lot of interesting design possibilities, as there is a plethora of base material to consider for inspiration and styling guidelines to stick to to make the character recognizable.”

Only a few days in, the Kickstarter campaign has already reached its $1000 goal.

“Any additional funding will allow me to further my use of different materials and start adding gear to the suit like speakers and cameras in the cowl,” Gordon said.

The campaign concludes on Dec. 10.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

Does Your Band Need A Movement Coach?

Does Your Band Need A Movement Coach?

Kevin-andrews

Kevin Andrews is a Nashville-based choreographer and movement coach who works with country musicians on their stage presence in addition to such activities as choreographing music videos. He’s focusing in on a specific niche but what he’s doing is a good example of what a lot of solo acts and bands need. Some artists have difficulty adjusting to the stage imagining that somehow just “being themselves” will make them look “natural.” But the stage is anything but a natural place and a movement coach might be just the thing you need.

I found out about Kevin Andrews via an interesting piece he wrote about the top 4 ways country music can compete with pop music performances.

Being a choreographer for hire, he does focus on that element of what country artists can do to up their stage show but also discusses rehearsing the performance on stage and not letting your lighting become a light show. The latter works in other genres but not so well in country music.

In the following video he gets down to some very basic concepts for stage performance:

Play YouTube video

3 Quick Artist Movement Tips

Andrews says he’s worked with such stars as LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich and Alan Jackson. It would be really interesting to see those interactions but from the article and the video we can see two basic keys:

Maintain an awareness of how you’re presenting yourself to your audience so that you’re not cutting yourself off with the mic or inadvertently closing off from your audience.

Have some choreographed moves in place that you can draw on at appropriate moments without making your act seem totally choreographed.

Of course the details will differ based on the size of stage and your musical genre but a movement coach or choreographer might be just what you need even if you don’t want any dance steps or choreographed material.

Much Of Movement Coaching Isn’t About Choreography

Note Andrews’ advice in the video about holding the mic on stage with the hand furthest away from the audience so that your arm isn’t blocking your upper body from view.

That’s not something you choreograph. It’s more a habit you develop that you can carry through everything you do onstage. Because the underlying principle is to never turn your back on your audience and when you turn to the side to keep your body open to the audience.

Someone who’s trained to view detailed movement can help you with that and point out the moments you’re most likely to lose track of the underlying principle. But they’ll probably start like Andrews with a very specific and important technique from which you’ll learn concepts that you can apply throughout your performance.

Analyzing videos of your performance focusing only on the movement and presentations can also be of help. A trained eye can teach you how to see the details that matter without getting distracted by all the other stuff happening onstage.

Here’s A Different Example

Here’s a quick example of what an outside eye can do:

I saw a young rapper in Raleigh years ago who had a strong presence on stage and well-developed songs for someone at that level of the game which basically meant he had the potential to go further.

But he had this habit of bending one of his knees in time to the music and following through with his thigh kind of bouncing up into the air. It was a fairly large consistent movement far beyond tapping your foot to the beat. The problem was he was initiating the movement on the beat but visually speaking the movement suggested that the beat occurred when his thigh reached the top of its arc.

That meant his leg always looked like it was behind the beat which he was rapping to in perfect rhythm. It also meant that his stage show was characterized by that one movement.

It’s the kind of thing his friends would say doesn’t matter and he might reject as an issue because it felt natural.

But when was the last time you saw a pro with a real career distinctly moving in the same offbeat manner through every song?

I can’t think of anybody.

Rob Zombie Talks Insane Clowns and Crowdfunding His New Film ’31’

MUSIC NEWS
Rob Zombie Talks Insane Clowns and Crowdfunding His New Film ’31’

By KORY GROW | Jul 31, 2014 AT 09:55AM

Rob Zombie, who has directed movies like Devil’s Rejects and two Halloween films, was uncharacteristically uneasy at first with the idea of crowdfunding a movie. But that went away once he realized it was a quid-pro-quo tradeoff. On Thursday, the director launched a campaign to fund his next movie 31, offering the sorts of rewards he knows his fans want. “People have come up to me over the years and asked, ‘How can I get these props?’ ‘How can I come to the set?'” he tells Rolling Stone. “So I realized a crowdfunding campaign is not a guy on a street corner with a hat asking for money.”

13 Terrifying Horror Movies You Can’t Unsee

Over the next two months, Zombie is looking to raise funds for the film via his new website RZ-31. The director is offering up a variety of high-quality rewards to people who want to support the movie, including autographed posters, a chance for Zombie to follow a winner on Twitter, a winner’s name in the credits, a lifetime laminate to see Zombie on tour at any show and a gig as an extra in 31. Zombie will also offer selected props from his movies, including Halloween masks and giant crosses from House of 1000 Corpses.

The movie tells the story of five people kidnapped in the five days leading up to Halloween and how they must fight to survive in a place called Murder World playing the game “31.” The game’s rules require the kidnapped person to kill his or her opponent – a group of clowns called “the heads” – in 12 hours to be freed.

“I’ve noticed with all of the movies I’ve made that so many people get tattoos from the movie,” Zombie explains. “When you love something so much, you just want to be a part of it. And that’s what I think about this crowd-funding campaign – you can be a part of it.” Rolling Stone spoke to Zombie about 31 and coming around to crowdfunding.

How did you get the concept for 31?
I was reading this statistic: Halloween is the Number One day of the year when people go missing for some reason. I thought, “What an interesting premise for a film.” This is five people that go missing on each day leading up to Halloween and what happens to them on the 31st.

Clowns are a big part of that, apparently.
In some fashion, yeah. Very horrible, disgusting, violent, despicable clowns, which people seem to hate.

Are you scared of clowns?
Maybe when I was a baby or something. I remember seeing this Super 8 footage that my parents made of me at the grand opening of McDonald’s or something. I was a little older than a baby and Ronald McDonald was there, freaking the fuck out of me. I didn’t even know it was a clown. It was just a guy with a white face and bright red hair, and a stranger. So I was not too happy. [But] I’ve never had a fear of clowns. I find clowns fascinating. On one level, they’re very entertaining and on another, they’re incredibly repulsive.

You’ve said you want this movie to be gritty. Why gritty?
With each film, I try to adapt the style that I feel is applicable to the story. A gritty approach didn’t fit the story of my last film, Lords of Salem. I wanted to do something that was a little more grand; a little cleaner cinematically. For this, I feel like a very nasty, gritty, guerilla-style approach to the filmmaking fits the story and the vibe of the movie.

How far into the production are you? Is the script done?
Yeah, that’s done. We’re going to start location starting in about a week. We’re moving along. Movies have only two speeds: painfully slow and “now you’re behind schedule.” Right now, we’re in the slow phase.

Do you have a cast?
No, we haven’t started that yet. But we’ll get on that pretty soon.

What is the coolest reward in the crowdfunding campaign?
Getting your name in the credits. If there was a time where someone told me, “Your name can be forever in the credits of­ Star Wars,” or whatever, I’d be like, “Fuck yeah.” That’s pretty rad.

You’re offering masks from your Halloween. How many of those did you make?
They’re from one scene in the film, and I don’t know how many were made exactly. Maybe there were a couple hundred. Each one was one of a kind. They’re all handmade. At this point, some were destroyed in the making. Some were lost. I gave some away to people, because it was a cool parting gift when we ended the movie. But there are about 50 that I have left over.

You’re also giving away some big cemetery crosses from House of 1000 Corpses. Where do you store those?
I have a huge warehouse, because I need a place for my stage shows from the tours. We were cleaning it out and I found this huge crate filled with these crosses. They’ve been sitting there since 2001 at least. It’s a cool thing to get. If I was a big fan of, say, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and someone said, “We just found the original chainsaw. Anyone want to buy it?” it would be like that for me.

Another reward is a painting you did of a clown. How much painting do you do?
I went to school for painting when I graduated high school. I paint now more than ever. I’ve just been doing a bunch of clown designs and trying to work out the makeup.

Beyond the movie, are you working on a new record?
Yeah, I’m in the studio right now. I got off tour a few days ago, and right now I’m already working on the new album, which we’ll have finished this year. I want to have it done before the movie starts. I don’t want to come back to the record after the movie. It’s too long of a break. We have a ton of stuff written and, little by little, we’re finishing them up. We’re more than half done at this point.

Lastly, are you at all concerned about giving away a lifetime laminate to your concerts?
It does sound funny, right? “Lifetime Laminate.” I see so many people who come up to me and say, “This is the 25th time I’ve seen you guys.” I figure that makes sense. We still have many, many years left of touring. You can go, “Hey, why rush to buy a ticket? I’m getting in anyway. It’s sold out? Not for me!”

What band would you want a lifetime laminate for?
Well, at this point with the ticket prices, the Rolling Stones would be nice.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rob-zombie-talks-insane-clowns-and-crowdfunding-his-new-film-31-20140731#ixzz39CNJMMy8
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

The Big Problem Equity Crowdfunding Platforms Face

The Big Problem Equity Crowdfunding Platforms Face
Posted on January 7, 2014 by Michael Ibberson Updated January 7, 2014

Equity crowdfunding platforms encounter several challenges. The SEC knows this better than most, but there are more than just regulations standing in the way of this industry. While investors and project creators must tread carefully when raising capital, the many portals online face several obstacles of their own.

Once such challenge has been called the “Due Diligence Dilemma.” In the US, most equity crowdfunding platforms have a very low project acceptance rate — anywhere from 1-5% — meaning that portals must perform a substantial amount of due diligence in order to approve only a handful of applicants per few hundred. While this, in itself, poses a great amount of work, the real trouble may lie in the illusion of safety that results.

Portals with very low acceptance rates appear as the smarter investment compared to those with lenient filters. If investors believe that portals have done the due diligence for them, they may feel less inclined to conduct research themselves. Although this will not be a concern for seasoned investors, it’s a problem for those entering the market for the first time. If start-ups on a portal fail, investors may blame the website for their losses, generating poor publicity, which, in crowdfunding, is a huge deal.

On the flip side of things, portals may find difficulties raising awareness for certain campaigns since many start-ups try to hide from the public while in a volatile state. Although this would inevitably lead to the campaign’s failure, it’s still a situation portals and crowdfunders must both consider before moving forward. Determining the readiness of a given project will be important as competition between platforms increases.

Since reputation plays such an important part in a portal’s success, attracting investors who will put these worries to rest is paramount. Finding the balance between a healthy start-up and investor population is not so easy, however. Without a large population of investors, crowdfunders see no chance of success, and without enough lucrative projects, investors look elsewhere. As equity-crowdfunding portals scan more and more traffic to achieve this balance, things may get overwhelming. How they handle their due diligence under such circumstances will become a leading factor for industry success.

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

Solving the Riddle of Discoverability

Brooke Kinley Adventures
Journalist. Adventurer. Sister. Outdoorswoman.

Solving the Riddle of Discoverability

by AS Bond

As a new self published author, I quickly realized that the main challenge facing me in selling my books is ‘discoverability’. Or, in other words, making your book stand out and be seen; a particularly difficult task when you don’t have a major publisher getting reviews on your behalf in national newspapers, or buying window space in Waterstones. That’s where BooksGoSocial.com helped me, but it’s a part of a very big puzzle. Book marketing for yourself is a time consuming, difficult and even creatively challenging, but ultimately of course, very rewarding.

Patriot, A Brooke Kinley Adventure is my first self published novel, I was surprised at just how much hard work is involved! I’m not even talking about writing it; that’s a whole other blog post! I approached publishing Patriot as professionally as any publishing company and just managing the entire process was a full time job for several months. First, I had to research all the options for self publishing, right down to the minutiae of ISBN numbers, distribution options etc. This took two months. Then, I had to organize the editing, the formatting, the jacket design, the publishing (print and ebook) as well as my own business administration.

Yet it is the marketing that has been the real challenge. Like many authors, I’m focused on actually writing books. That’s the bit I enjoy, the thing I’m pretty good at (and I’ve been doing it for publishers both global and regional, as well as self publishing for almost two decades now). So, when it came to getting word out about my first novel, I was left wondering; where to start?

With my traditional background – and a few handy contacts from my career as a freelance journalist – I began with the solid stuff; press releases to relevant publications, asking for reviews, offering articles on related topics, that sort of thing. First lesson learned; start early. I mean really early, like 3 months before publication. That’s a difficult thing for self published writers to get to grips with, as you need a supply of print galleys and a digital version to get any big print publications to even look at your work. Plus, that’s assuming you ‘forget’ to mention it’s self published and you have a demonstrable track record and/or a killer hook to get their interest in the first place. How many self published authors have the book ready to go three months before publication? Well, if you want your novel considered by a national women’s magazine, or a big player like Fresh Fiction in the USA, you have to hold back and show some patience. It may pay dividends!

Many self publishers have tiny or non-existent budgets and depend on social media to market their books. This was a real learning curve for me, and I’m still travelling. Twitter (great), Facebook (variable), website (essential) and a blog (definitely essential) all work together, but you need more. Sign up to book discussion and recommendation websites, such as Goodreads.com, engage with other writers and readers by reviewing books, commenting on threads. There’s a world of social interaction out there and while the measurable impact of any particular part is impossible to quantify, what is clear that without it, your book will almost certainly sink without trace.

What I have also learned is to evaluate all the offers from companies for a) track record; can they do what they are claiming? b) can you do it yourself? c) can someone else do it for less? There are a lot of people out there trying to sell you market exposure. Be very careful. It would b easy, for example, to spend several thousand dollars on getting reviews by top Amazon reviewers and other types of Amazon based promotion, but it is actually free and easy to find out who are the top reviewers yourself and contact them directly. Similarly, there are many guides and books out there (some free, most at very low cost), as well as uTube videos etc on how to make Amazon work for you.

Among all this cacophony of marketers trying to sell to you, BooksGoSocial.com are really useful. They offer to showcase your first page free (‘free’ is a great twitter hashtag to get noticed) and multiple twitter accounts promoting your work, not to mention plenty of good ideas for practical, low cost marketing techniques for you, as author to put into practice straightaway. They are a great example of a low cost, high promotion tool that can really help with that thorny problem of ‘discoverability’. I did my homework before I signed up and they passed with flying colours.

What it all comes down to is putting in the time and the energy. You are learning a new skill. The best thing is, you then apply it to your own business; your books. The market is out there, so get stuck in and get your book discovered.

June 16, 2014Leave a reply
« Previous
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
Website
Comment

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.

Latest News

Solving the Riddle of Discoverability by AS Bond June 16, 2014
PATRIOT Goes On Tour! June 11, 2014
Patriot Debuts at #13 in Amazon top 100 Best Seller-International Mystery & Crime! May 1, 2014
Q&A with author AS Bond April 24, 2014
Where you can buy PATRIOT April 24, 2014

Listen to A.S. Bond on CBC Radio Canada

LISTEN to the interview podcast of bestselling author A.S. Bond on CBC Radio, Canada. tinyurl.com/mht86yf
Follow me on Twitter

 

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Crowdfunding a Film

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Before Crowdfunding a Film
Posted on February 26, 2014 by Aaron Djekic Updated February 26, 2014
By: Ryan Strandjord

1. Are you willing to be the face of your campaign?

The personality of the creator behind the film can often be the difference between someone admiring the project and actually making a donation. First and foremost this means that YOU HAVE TO BE IN YOUR VIDEO. Making a personal connection with your audience is paramount. Seriously, go look at how many successful campaigns don’t have the filmmaker in the video.

2. Is this a project worth crowdfunding for?

This is a tough question to answer on your own so you may need some help (see #3). Just because you want money to make your film doesn’t mean you should ask for it.
Is this a film that people are going to get excited about? What’s the hook? Have you pitched the film to a number of people already? It’s a great way to gauge potential interest in the story. If people aren’t interested they’re not going to donate.

3. Can you assemble a team to work on the campaign with you?

Don’t do it alone. You’ll want people to consult on your ideas, others to help produce/shoot/edit videos, and possibly more to help with marketing and to push social media promotions. If you’re doing it alone then whenever you get “busy” the campaign stops evolving. Filmmaking is a collaborative art and crowdfunding should be no different.

4. Are you prepared to follow up with your backers throughout the life of the project?

Launching a crowdfunding campaign is like entering into a marriage with your future backers. If you’re working toward a sustainable career as an artist this union is vastly important. People want more than just their perk and to see the movie and keeping your audience engaged helps you to fulfill one of the greatest benefits of crowdfunding a film project which is AUDIENCE BUILDING. This is especially important if you ever plan on crowdfunding for another film in the future.

5. How much are you willing to sacrifice to make the campaign a success?

It takes hard work to reach your goal, and that translates into hour after hour spent prepping for the campaign and pushing it after launch. Be prepared to wake up early, work over your lunch break, and to spend many evenings working on getting the next donation. Often it becomes a battle of attrition. You have to make sacrifices with your time and for a bit sleep/friends/fun will have to wait. This is where you find out how important making the film is to you.

Ryan Strandjord is a Minneapolis based filmmaker, producer, crowdfunding consultant, and community organizer. His latest film City Boots premiered at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, and will soon make it’s museum and television debut at the world-renowned Walker Art Center and TPT respectively. The film has also played numerous festivals around the Midwest. He’s currently developing a script for Prescription Happiness, a story about a young pregnant woman struggling to hold onto free emotion while living in a society controlled through prescription drugs.

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

How to Create a Convincing Crowdfunding Campaign Five Crowdfunding Tips for Every Campaign

A successful crowdfunding campaign is multi-faceted: there are many delicate components that must be carefully tended in order for them to all work together. In the past, we’ve discussed these components, but now it’s time to look into the ways in which a business can improve their crowdfunding cash flow after they’ve launched a campaign. Before continuing, please review the following archived articles — in case you missed them the first time!

Use Social Media Crowdfunding to Revitalize Your Campaign
The Crowdfunding Checklist
How to Create a Convincing Crowdfunding Campaign
Five Crowdfunding Tips for Every Campaign
#1) Establish Different Levels for Contribution

Leveling your campaign’s incentives is a great way to attract donations. By giving away large perks to the most munificent supporters, you may encourage others to follow-suit without stopping the smaller contributors from pitching-in. Consider a ladder: those who wish to climb to the top have put in the most effort and will receive accordingly; those who wish to only stand a few feet taller can still do so, but will less commendation. With various incentives available, there is going to be an option for everybody.

#2) Incorporate Unique Perks

In conjunction with tip #1, you should chose original perks as a way to boost your crowdfunding cash flow. With unique perks specific to your proposal, donors will see more reason to contribute. Although the smallest perk may not be as valuable as the “top-prize”, it should still be enticing enough to make small funders feel it is worth it to contribute. By giving away all of the best perks only to the large donors, you will in-turn reject those giving anything less, which is one of the worst worst things you can do. So, think about this carefully and do the research. Determine what will get people involved at all rungs of the ladder.

#3) Film a Video

When you first launched your campaign, you developed a story (a background) to gain supporters. Take this one step further and film a video. Since a video combines both audio and visual components, it is that much more powerful. A video is an excellent way to engage with an audience, using images, music, commentary, and much more. In addition, videos are pervasive and can go viral over night. Put the effort into filming a professional video and you will notice a huge difference in your crowdfunding cash flow.

 

 

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

Danny Kelman of Crowdboarders Speaks on Social Investing

Danny Kelman of Crowdboarders Speaks on Social Investing
Posted on March 31, 2014 by Michael Ibberson Updated March 31, 2014
Michael Ibberson Of CrowdClan speaks with Danny Kelman, CEO of CrowdBoarders, to talk about his latest venture and how he plans to integrate a social networking platform directly with crowdfunding.

Michael Ibberson of CrowdClan.com: Social networking and crowdfunding are two of the same. CrowdBoarders’ combination of the two is a particularly interesting idea. Right now, CrowdBoarders offers a variety of neat features: Could you highlight a few major benefits in becoming a Crowdboarder? How can a crowdfunder extent these benefits to their campaigns?

Danny Kelman of CrowdBoarders.com: Firstly in our mind crowdfunding and social networking couldn’t be further apart, one of the main differentiators we have seen from people raising the money they are looking for and failing isn’t based on the merit of the idea but their own networks. People have friends on facebook and followers on twitter, but could you tell me the average of one of your twitter followers last four investments, what industries they were in and where they spend the majority of their time looking for investment opportunities? No of course not. This is where CrowdBoarders comes in, crowdfunders who want to be fully immersed in a network of visibility and endless capabilities become crowdboarders, the rest simply remain on their first generation platforms.

Michael Ibberson: As CrowdBoarders is currently invite only, what stand-out qualities do you look for in an applicant?

Danny Kelman: This is only because we are pre-launch, we are inviting people who want to create crowdboards first so people will have things to look at when the site is live. Once we launch anyone will be able to become a CrowdBoarder.

Michael Ibberson: CrowdBoarders advertises “no time deadlines.” As well, you allow members to post investment opportunities for free. What inspired these decisions and what has been the audience’s general reception? They seem to set you apart from a lot of other portals.

Danny Kelman: Raising money for free doesn’t exist in todays world, because currently crowdfunding companies are building their businesses off of a financial model, not a technology one. We have analyzed a lot of markets and their migration from offline businesses to online one in particular being ticket sales, you wouldn’t dream of charging an artist or concert promoter a % of their ticket sales so why an entrepreneur with their idea.

We have found the most open way to generate revenue to build our network is to charge those investing a small processing fee instead of taking a massive portion off of the person raising funds. This way it all ads up the same but this way the person creating the CrowdBoard receives what they are looking for and the person investing knows exactly how much of their money is actually being invested and how much is being paid in fees. So someone building a crowdboard to raise $100,000 would actually receive $100,000 instead of $95,000 and someone investing $50 wuld invest $50 and pay $6 in processing fees. We have always found an honest and up front approach to business is always key in building success.

We didn’t want to focus on raising money quickly; we are focused on raising money correctly. If you have a great idea who says it has to raise money within a month, maybe your industry isn’t ready for it but it is the next great idea of next year. CrowdBoarders isn’t trying to copy the traditional model of crowdfunding, in fact you will see everything done on our site differently and we believe for the better and this is what our patents protect.

The general perception of the audiences we have been speaking too, and the conventions we have been doing is normally “oh, of course” we have made some very simple changes to the way people can raise money online and from the feedback we are receiving I think people see it as the same way we do. People are very confused about this industry I always get asked questions about sites and what they specialize in, it has been our vision to bring them all into one network with all sorts of fundraising from loans to equity, charity and reward happening in one place putting crowdboarders at the center of the action being able to be apart of everything that is going on. The constraints and limitations of crowdfunding have been lifted with crowdboarders we have built a site where people have freedom.

 

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

The Future of Content Through Crowdfunding and Journalism

The Future of Content Through Crowdfunding and Journalism
Posted on March 4, 2014 by RoyMorejon Updated March 4, 2014
Crowdfunding has been around for quite a few years. This grass-roots method of raising capital for a new business, restaurant or even church mission has proven very effective. Businesses as diverse as fashion designers, gamers and manufacturers of computer hardware have amassed the money they need to open their doors using crowdfunding.
One of the newer sectors of the business world to take advantage of this tactic is journalism. Freelance journalists are using crowdfunding to raise the money they need to follow a story without the editorial constraints involved with working for a newspaper, news service or news magazine.

Crowdfunding the content

Crowdfunding offers increased opportunities for freelancers, but it’s not just solo journalists who are asking you to foot the bill for their next great story. Writers who work for organizations that can’t–or won’t–spring for expenses for an overseas assignment or lengthy investigative research have turned to kickstarter programs to help them follow their hunches.

One recent example is Kim-Mai Cutler, who works for AOL’s “Tech Crunch.” She wants to fly to Vietnam to find the creator of the
“Flappy Bird” app that was recently pulled off of the market by Apple. There’s obviously a story behind the sudden move against the popular app, but it’s one that’s all, but impossible to learn via telephone interviews. That’s where you (and crowdfunding) come in. Cutler has turned to Crowd Tilt to help her raise the $3,000 necessary for her trip. To date, she’s raised over $5,000 with ten days remaining on the campaign.

Letting the readers pick the story

Another angle to crowdfunding and journalism is being tried by a handful of online news publications. Traditionally, news outlets, website and magazines have paid to produce a story and then sold it, either as a physical magazine or newspaper or, more recently, as a single article on sites like Amazon.com. Now, a few forward-thinking freelance journalists are bypassing editors and even news outlets and pitching their stories directly to the readers. Platforms like Uncoverage and Kickstarter make it possible for individual readers to help pay for an article before it is written. Kickstarter alone recently hit the one billion dollar mark in funding. Clearly, people are reacting positively to crowdfunding appeals.

Whether the news-reading public embraces sponsoring news stories before they are written remains to be seen. After all, the concept turns our traditional view of the separation of editorial and commerce in news reporting on its ear. Is that a good thing? Only time will tell.

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States

Types of Loans Available through Debt Crowdfunding

Types of Loans Available through Debt Crowdfunding
Posted on April 18, 2014 by Michael Ibberson Updated April 18, 2014
Debt Crowdfunding

For those familiar only with rewards- and donation-based crowdfunding, the debt crowdfunding process may feel alien. Before listing on a portal, applicants must submit tons of financial and personal information for review. In order to even receive a quote or verify your project’s eligibility, portals must retrieve your credit score and run an identity check, among various other things.

As can be seen, the process is much more complex and requires a great amount of forethought. Repayment periods, interest rates, portal fees, and myriad other details must enter into the equation early on. Those choosing to engage with debt crowdfunding must also be mindful of the economic environment around them. This is particularly true for startups in competitive markets. But putting the specifics aside, crowdfunders should know the types of debt crowdfunding loans available to them.

Types of Debt Crowdfunding Loans

Personal Loans

Different portals offer different loan opportunities. Prosper excels at connecting individuals with personal loans for nearly any occasion, including debt consolidation, home improvement, auto, medical/dental, vacation, baby, engagement, taxes, and more. These loans range from $2,000 to $35,000 with an amortization period of three to five years. The interest rates, processing fees, and loan options will change website-to-website, and even country-to-country, so research the market well before listing.

Business Loans

Similar to the personal loans, business loans come in many different forms. For instance, Assetz Capital, one of the UK’s fastest growing peer-to-peer lenders, allows startups to apply to one of three loans: property development, mortgage, or business. Like most other portal offerings, these loans require security and span the course of one to five years. The amount a business may borrow varies as well. Funding Circle, a leading debt crowdfunding portal in the UK, allows businesses to borrow £5,000 to £1,000,000. The fees are often transparent on such portals and right from the home page businesses can see the common lending rates.

As you ponder which type of loan best suits your project, read our past posts on debt crowdfunding investment opportunities and campaign management.

Location:Sycamore Dr,Lancaster,United States